Faced with broad labels, such as ‘ software developer’ or ‘dba‘, it can be tricky to get consensus on skill
levels, attitudes and goals. What you then discover is that one person’s
idea of your user’s ability is magically exaggerated when they’re arguing a
case for assumed user knowledge, and then somewhat diminished at other occasions
when you’re arguing the case for a feature that would take a lot of development
time.

Fortunately, we usability people have thought about this. You’ll find that
it’s hard to pick up a usability book that doesn’t mention personas in some
form or another, confidently claiming how they’ll ensure everyone knows who
your users really are.

Excellent. Jobsa good’n.Time for
a pint of warm froffy ale and a quick read of ‘That’s me sorted’ magazine.

Only, that’s not quite the end of the story. Personas are tools we use to
specify a user archetype. They represent a broad group of people as a
single user who is easier to relate to, understand and design for.
Satisfy your persona and you satisfy the group. So clearly, you need to
think long and hard about the group to ensure that your persona is
representative. Most projects have a couple of personas representing groups of people with differing needs.
Hard as that is, it’s not impossible and creating believable and representative
personas is a great way to start a project. Customer visits, forum and
support feedback as well as market research are all rich avenues of information
about your real customer needs.

No, what’s really tricky is integrating personas into your development team and
extracting the full worth of what a persona is good at – i.e. ensuring everyone
knows the goals, behaviours and skills of your
users. What typically happens is that unless everyone is completely sold
on the idea (and reminded almost daily), it’s easy to lapse back into the mindset
of imagining a malleable user that changes according to your needs.

Red Gate are pretty close to getting the full benefit of using personas and their
associated scenarios, but in the next coming weeks, I’m looking to implement a
few more ideas to have us living and breathing our users.

To that end, I’ll bevaporising
any appropriate users and feeding the resultant er… vapor… into the air
conditioning. Any volunteers?
]]>https://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/2006/09/28/vaporising-users/feed/0War correspondanthttps://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/2006/06/28/war-correspondant/
https://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/2006/06/28/war-correspondant/#commentsWed, 28 Jun 2006 03:20:00 +0000Dom Reedhttp:///blogs/2006/06/28/war-correspondant/At times, Red gate is a dangerous place to work. It’s not that the volcano in the first floor meeting room erupts very often, or that the crocodiles have managed to break free from the car I managed to trick them into. No. Not those kind of dangers.

Let me explain. It started innocently enough at a time of year that is all about love and giving – Christmas. A Secret Santa event was organised and presents were happily distributed. It was all going well up until Bart unwrapped his gift… Even then, it wasn’t clear how the future would be changed irrecoverably. Remind me to send a terminator back to that happy day.

Anyway, Bart’s face did light up in wonder as his foam disk firing, lazer warbling, rapid rate alien blaster was revealed. Batteries include too – which was nice. It wasn’t long before Bart was a force to be feared in the office. Minor disputes were quickly and decisively settled with 10 rounds of forcefully flung foam. Happy times were effectively over.

Shortly after, the arms race began. Disgruntled victims sought ways to retaliate and assert their own views – new purchases were made. Where previously Bart would enjoy a position of total control, foam rockets would ricochet back in Bart’s direction. His dominance in the weapon’s arena was being challenged.

Soon, it wasn’t just foam rockets. Suction pad topped darts began to penetrate the air space with deadly accuracy – Bart was forced into retreat and an eerie calm beset the office.

It was inevitable. The cliché came true, the calm gave way to the storm and the big guns started to appear. Now there are pump action, ball flinging implements of mayhem in the office. Nobody is safe and prolonged battles flare up at the slightest provocation.

And then a glimmer of hope. I’ve just found the car keys for the crocodile car. Now lets see who gets their way…

]]>https://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/2006/06/28/war-correspondant/feed/1Getting to know you…https://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/2006/05/12/getting-to-know-you/
https://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/2006/05/12/getting-to-know-you/#commentsFri, 12 May 2006 12:16:00 +0000Dom Reedhttp:///blogs/2006/05/12/getting-to-know-you/We’re a friendly bunch here at Red Gate – always
looking to make new friends. Whilst it’s true that we dearly love sitting
in front of our pooters and seeing who can grow the best chilli plants,
sometimes we just want to get out, meet our users and have a jolly good gossip.

We like to listen, we like to observe and we like to learn. We like to
understand your niggly gripes, your favourite tweaks and what really makes you
want to twist your melon until it can just utter the word
“elbow”. It’s nothing sinister, it’s just that we know that the
best way to make useful tools is to really understand what would be
helpful. Sometimes it takes an onlooker to see how convoluted a process
has become, or how many hoops you must amble through before you achieve your
goals.

So that’s the plan for the next few weeks. We’re on the road again,
making new friends and hopefully learning a thing or two on the way. If
you’re in the UK, somewhere close to Cambridge or London, by all means get in
touch and we can arrange to meet up for a chat.

Oh… and for the record, I reckon my chilli plant (Rangdo) pips the other wannabies
having so far produced enough chillies to make a rather scrumptious sweet chilli
tomato chutney. The other somewhat puny plants in the office could barely
muster enough chillies for a small dollop of vanilla ice cream. Pah!]]>https://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/2006/05/12/getting-to-know-you/feed/0S.P.L.I.N.K.https://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/2006/02/13/s-p-l-i-n-k/
https://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/2006/02/13/s-p-l-i-n-k/#commentsMon, 13 Feb 2006 22:45:00 +0000Dom Reedhttp:///blogs/2006/02/13/s-p-l-i-n-k/OK.. this has nothing to do with SQL, and for that I
apologise. But it does have some relevance to usable design and
application development:

OK.. so it’s a road safety message for
children enjoying the 1970′s in the UK. I can remember this one,
scarily enough.

You can imagine the scene. Some hard pressed TV producer is
tasked to save the growing number of kids caught up in road traffic
accidents with a quick public information film. Hard hitting, to
the point and memorable. What better way to achieve this than a handy mnemonic…

So let’s just spell out SPLINK:

S for Stop
P for Pavement
L for Look (and listen)
I for If (traffic appears)
N for no (don’t run into that car)
K for keep (looking for traffic as you cross)

Seriously.. this is what it stands for…

You can just imagine the kids stood beside the roadside. S for
Stop… ok.. I got that.. P… Pavement, yup, I’m already here…
that’s why I stopped… L… what did that stand for? What is
I… I forget… N for.. um… er… Nothing coming… k for
er… kiss the other side…

Cue tragic accident……

For me, the very appearance of an acronym is often enough to send me
into a fit of despair. What better way to encrypt a system than
to give it a “need to learn” acronym? SQL, ADO, RAID, ASP, PSP,
PHP, DMZ, P2P, RAM, ICQ, ASL, IEEE, DNS, TLA, ISO, FPU, PNG, NPC, TCL,
JSP, GNU, BSD, UDP, JEN, MPL, ESR, RMS, FTP, ETF, JFK, AWK ETC.

OK…. I can sense that many of you already know what they mean… but that’s not the point. It’s gone too far.

It’s almost impossible to read a technical document/article/recipe/llama/publication without having to learn a new acronym.

Does this enhance learnability? Does your user have the capacity
to learn another acronym? Might they forget it instantly or
forever need to divert their attention from your application/document
back to their memory to recall this new timesaver?

There has to be a better way…

I bloomin’ hate acronyms…

*sobs*

Auntie Mavis

]]>https://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/2006/02/13/s-p-l-i-n-k/feed/3It all went wronghttps://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/2006/02/04/it-all-went-wrong/
https://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/2006/02/04/it-all-went-wrong/#commentsSat, 04 Feb 2006 13:15:00 +0000Dom Reedhttp:///blogs/2006/02/04/it-all-went-wrong/Things weren’t going swimmingly. In fact, you could say it was an unmitigated disaster. That might sound overly dramatic though, so let’s just say things were somewhat less optimal and keep it quiet. Nobody needs to know. In fact, forget I even mentioned it. Forget this even. No really… stop reading. Why are you still here? Didn’t I tell you to stop reading? Ughh… this is getting complicated. *points at shiny thing off to the left*

You still here?

*sobs*

Ok… let me explain, seeing as you’re one of those ‘inquisitive’ types.It started with one of those natural urges. Not that type, just the type that gets you through the day, and by that I mean tea. Mug in hand I venture into the kitchen to prepare myself a lovely cup of beverage heaven. Well that was the plan, but life somehow conspires to cause me abject misery when I attempt life’s most mundane tasks.

The kitchen makes me nervous. It’s full of complicated devices that as a child my mother would steer me clear of. Kettle? Boiling hot water, could scar you for life so leave well alone. Fridge? Very cold, could get stuck inside it, been known to kill kittens. Fork? Lethal in the wrong hands, you could have someone’s eye out with that. Microwave? Can make anything explode in a mysterious voyeuristic manner.

So.. stepping into the kitchen has already caused me to palpitate and nervously convulse.

Tea then.. that’s the plan. Now one of the Red Gate kettles is a bit of a feisty beast. It has an air of chic smugness, but it belies a woeful secret. For all its fancy appearance, it’s thwart with failings. For starters, its little water gauge on the side is permanently misted up, so you never really know how full it is. And that unfortunately brings us to the lid. Now I’m forced to open the lid to see how full it really thinks it is. The lid. The bloomin’ lid. Easy off, painful on. Some narcissistic designer saw fit to bestow upon this Red Gate kettle, a lid of pure evil. It takes seemingly minutes to pop it on, but it’ll gleefully pop off at the most inappropriate moment, thus exposing its boiling fury. This often occurs at the moment of pouring, almost as if it has saved up its vengence for when you least expect it. Now if it was one of those joyful pourers, this might be ok, but it’s one of those designs that seems to spatter boiling water in every direction but towards your mug. Don’t they test these things?

Now the fridge is pretty harmless, you might think. And to be honest, it is pretty safe, but again, the design has somehow gone wrong. I’ve learnt that the best way to open the fridge is to actually put your fingers between the door and the carcase and gently prise the opening apart. Now logic might tell you to use the ‘designed’ handle on the front – all big, chrome and shiny. But alas, something went wrong. If I pull on the handle, I’m almost more likely to pull the fridge over than to actually open it – such is the suction of the seal. And it’s not just me. I can watch nigh on all Red Gate employees behave in the same way. Can you see what’s wrong here?

And then… the final insult in my beverage attaining quest…. the milk carton.

Now here is the worst designed product – probably on the planet. A design that has at its heart, a deep seated desire to never relenquish its bounty. It’s hard to describe this, so bear with me. It has a little green screw off lid. It screws off easily. Milk shall surely be imminently mine. But no. Some person thought it appropriate to design level 2 of the milk opening game to be nigh on impossible. It’s a bit like learning to fold a pice of paper in half, and then as your next challenge, out-fold the world’s second highest ranking origami champion. Unless you can inadvertently distract him to flop his creation into a flame, you’re onto a bit of a loser.

This carton has a plastic ‘handle’ by which you are meant to delicately grab and then prise off, to reveal a bounty of milk. I’ve opened a lot of these now (being somewhat addicted to tea) and I can probably claim a 20% success rate. 80% of the time the plastic ‘handle’ snaps and I’m left faced with a sealed plastic carton of frustration. Who designed this?

So out comes the fork. This is a dangerous addition to the task, but now, necessary. Mum warned me of the dangers of the fork, but I feel I’m ready. The first stab has to be relatively precise. Miss the target and you’re gonna get sprayed. Hit the target and you’re but part way there.

In a most deft attack, I manage to pierce the plastic and start the battle with the carton. The carton buckles under the force – I’m still yanking on the fork – nothing gives, and after a 4 minute struggle I see an opening crack in the plastic that makes me feel that some headway has been made. A fellow employee douses my sweaty brow and provides encouraging words of support.

By now a crowd has formed, and they are party to what is the witness of a birth of a new carton of milk. It is joyous. The milk is liberated.

And so the tea is made.

Now this is typical. Our lives are surrounded by products that actually fail to live up to our needs. An over zealous milk carton designer has forgotten that we actually need to be able to get to the product. A DVD case is wrapped in inescapable plastic. A computer dumbly responds to a routine task. And don’t even get me started on the microwave.

What happened? Isn’t technology meant to free us from effort? How come effort has suddenly become the result of technology? Aren’t we meant to be in control of or our tools?

And I guess this is why I exist. How to make technology work for us, and not have us work to use the technology.

And I’ve found a home at Red Gate. And we’ve bought a new kettle. And tea is bountiful.

Not once was I taken aside, sat down, and told in clear and simple words that my life would never be the same. Like hyperactive kittens faced with a vat of warm fishy milk, we lapped up the techniques to spot usability issues with gusto. So as we left the safe confines of university and gazed upon the world with our quizzical eyes, it didn’t take long for the horror to become apparent.

They were everywhere. Nothing escaped a healthy dose of rubbishness. Both physical and cognitive, unusable products abound.

But what of the curse? Well it’s nigh on impossible to switch off your unusable product antenna. And as you gaze on dumbfounded by the stupidity of a design, you can’t help but feel a little bit of your life seep out of your ears. Sometimes it’s just a little, and it drifts out at a relaxed pace. At other times, it’s a spleen venting avalanche of verbal diarrhea.

It was over Christmas that I had the misfortune to witness quite possibly one of the worst products I have ever seen: a talking alarm clock. The box did proudly proclaim: A pleasant voice announces the time every hour. Spot the problem? Every hour. Slumber. Slumber. Slumber. Slumber. IT’S THREE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING AND I THOUGHT YOU WOULDN’T MIND BEING WOKEN UP BY MY DULCET MECHANICAL WARBLINGS. No slumber.

But chances are, you wouldn’t even get to experience this, because you’d have thrown it at the wall before then. Not one member of the family could work out how to set the alarm and EVERY SINGLE button press resulted in an ear piercing bleep that sucked your very will to exist. That this product exists at all I find shocking. Even if the intended audience for this product was a blind person, it still fell woefully short of any use. If I ever meet the designer… WhyIoughta *shakes fist*

And I guess this brings me to my point. There is so much in this world that shouldn’t really be here. Gadgets that fail to deliver, features that go unused, clutter that clogs essential functionality and any song by Celine Dion (sorry Celine if you’re reading this). Whilst it’s often great to be able to announce a wide feature set to make your products sound feature rich, it’s only through a deep understanding of what is actually essential that you can hope to attain usable products.

Once you know what’s most important, it’s then that you can exert your full design enthusiasm towards ensuring that the functionality you do include is usable.

Milk cartons

*sobs*

Auntie Mavis

]]>https://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/2006/01/09/the-usability-curse/feed/1Filtering foibleshttps://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/2005/12/08/filtering-foibles/
https://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/2005/12/08/filtering-foibles/#commentsThu, 08 Dec 2005 16:09:00 +0000Dom Reedhttp:///blogs/2005/12/08/filtering-foibles/There are times when you’re striving
for a usable design, and no matter what you try, your attempt just
fails to cut the mustard. Everyone has a difference of opinion as
to what should be done to fix it and you’re stuck there trying to think
of a sensible improvement. What to do? Time to call on a
technique I like to call “Do an impromptu usability session with
colleagues who haven’t seen this type of functionality before”, or
DAIUSWCWHSTTOFB for short.

A design for filtering objects in one
of our applications is just such an occasion. This has gone
through a number of iterations, which all technically work, but could
hardly be called the definitive behaviour that we’re looking for.
This is a small part of the application and at this stage it doesn’t
warrant an external user usability trial, so instead, it’s a trawl
around the office to recruit likely victims for a quick 5 minute
filtering foray.

Plucking victims from their desk can be tricky,
but I tempt them with stories of gold, attractive members of the
opposite sex, and of course, dancing llamas. None can resist the
temptation and willingly follow me to my desk. Fools.
Sadly, this cunning ruse will not last long, so I need to be
quick. As they approach within 4 feet (and it becomes clear that
I’ve lied mercilessly to entice them over) I hit them with the
test. Reeling from the suddenness of my invitation, they
begrudgingly agree. Muhahahaha [Evil laugh]. I win
again. Ahem.

20 minutes and 4 victims later, the arguing
about whether the design works can be brought to a climactic
climax. It still doesn’t. *sobs* However, with
renewed behavioural ammunition, it’s back to the proverbial drawing
board to knock up another attempt. By gosh, when we’re done, this
is going to be one fantabulous filter. A filter so magnificent
that we might even attract a flock of admiring dancing llamas – maybe
even ones that know the fox trot…

Reviewing a usability trial recording is akin to playing the role of a
detective. You can’t be one of those detectives who, week after
week, fail to solve the crime. Nope – you have to instead adopt
the persona of the real detective – Like Hong Kong Phooey’s cat
Spot. Hong Kong Phooey may have been the number one super cool guy,
but he was simply an amusing figurehead to the real brains of the
dynamic duo. And so it was that I came to review the latest
usability trial recordings, pretending to be a cat and preparing to eat
the cat equivalent of humble pie.

Paws at the keyboard and watching the session back, it’s often subtle
clues you’re looking for. Why did they move the mouse there when
you asked them to do that task? Why did they think that function
could be found there? Observing the subtleties is one thing, but
then trying to work out what led them to think that way is the real
trick.

Some are obvious and relate to “signposts” that you have peppered
around the user interface. Button labels, icons and other
describing text are typical examples of signposts that a user will
absorb as they start to make sense of the interface before them.
Get a signpost wrong, and you run the risk of temporarily throwing the
user down the wrong path, or worse, permanently obscuring important
functionality. Get this one right though, and an interface is so
much easier to learn and navigate. This is why solitary icons
without an associated label are such a poor way to signpost an
interface. Icons are so ambiguous and can be interpreted to mean
something different by every new user. A text label, by contrast,
can at least be translated and if carefully chosen, will be correctly
understood by every user.

These are some of the first crimes to be solved by my wily feline senses.

Sometimes you only notice that something is a problem when you observe
it being used, and I guess this was our biggest lesson learnt for these
particular sessions. We had a clumsy mix of dialogs and whilst
the user’s managed to work their way through it, it clearly showed an
inelegant and tortured path we were forcing them down. As I
observed this, the paws were typing at a furious rate.

So what next? Well, in some cases it’s back to the drawing board
to think of how we can redesign problematic areas. Elsewhere,
it’s making small signpost tweaks. Finally, and most importantly,
I need to return this catsuit to the shop before they charge me for
returning it late. It’s not my fault that my tail has got stuck
in the zip and the suit designers felt it necessary to oversize the
paws. *sobs*

Time to leave the comfy confines of the office, brave the real world
and meet the most important people who work for Red Gate: our users.

With a bunch of design ideas stashed on a laptop, we venture off to
learn exactly how wrong we’ve got it. I have to admit, this is
secretly my favourite part of the job, but it does require a modicum of
courage to perform. It’s not easy to sit and watch someone use a
product that you think is pretty good, only to find it’s less so.
Nobody likes to be shown how bad they got it wrong – and that’s exactly
the sort of risk you take when running a usability trial.

But this is a vital step in working towards usable products, and you
have to be prepared to take a few humbling punches if you want to
succeed. What’s often worse, is that it’s often yourself that
delivers the punch, in a scene that wouldn’t look out of place in fight
club. As you sit back and scrutinize the recording of the
session, you have to give yourself a good slapping for whichever
interaction design travesty you’ve unleashed on an unsuspecting user.

So as we are about to embark on a fresh set of sessions, I can’t help
feel a pang of excitement as to how we’ll be able to improve our
designs – I just hope the bruises fade quickly…

A day that is hugely anticipated. Millions will take to the streets, trying to catch a glimpse of their favourite usability guru, sagely administering sermons on the woes of unusable products. I can see it now – it’ll generate almost as much fervour as the results for the Estonian Eurovision Song Contest entry in 1961. You can just smell the excitement.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love this to be a success, but I just can’t help but feel that we’ve got a long way to go until it’s ranked above other prestigious events, like for example, World Badger Day.

If this day does help to raise the awareness of this mismatch between rubbish products and user needs, then that’s all well and good, but how long before it’s actually taken seriously? When can we expect to see the public rise up and demand better? When will we be able to use technology and not be made to feel stupid?

My guess is that this is a very long way away. Why? I actually don’t think a user often recognises the fact that something is unusable. I think they struggle along with the tools that they have, seemingly oblivious that they could actually be far better. So that seems to place the emphasis on the designers to come up with usable designs. Will that happen? Maybe eventually, but marketeers seem to be in love with additional functionality and merging companies limit the choice we have and prevent smaller companies from gaining market share.

So maybe World Usability Day is the way forward. Raise awareness of the everyday rubbish designs that we have to endure so that the mindset may change to demand it elsewhere.